New World of Warcraft players leveling after the release of The War Within expansion might have found that they're inexplicably immortal, but game director Ion Hazzikostas has now clarified that this definitely isn't meant to be the case.
As highlighted on Reddit, it was found that, with a few exceptions aside, new players leveling in the Dragonflight zone just can't be killed – their health bars reportedly refill when brought to zero, bringing them right back from the brink. Speaking to Windows Central, Hazzikostas reveals that this stems from an intended feature, but it's gone a bit too far thanks to a bug.
"The seemingly immortal gameplay for players in current Dragonflight leveling is a bug," Hazzikostas confirms. He explains that when converting Dragonflight to "become the new default leveling experience," the devs received feedback that, since some of the content was originally built for more experienced veteran players, completely new players could feel overwhelmed.
"In The War Within, we added a 'training wheels' set of zone buffs themed around the different dragonflights, intended to only apply if you are a new player on your first playthrough (i.e. haven't unlocked Chromie Time, never had a max-level character, etc.)," Hazzikostas continues. "One of these buffs is a 'cheat death' that should save you from one death every so often. Unfortunately, there is a bug with that buff, and the cooldown isn't working. We're fixing this as we speak, and it should be resolved in the coming days."
Whoops. Clearly, the feature will still be around in some capacity – just to help new players settle into things without being constantly killed out there – but they certainly won't be permanent, unstoppable forces for much longer. Hazzikostas hasn't explained how long the cooldown on the buff is actually meant to last for, but it sounds like we're sure to find out soon enough.
